
HISTORIC PURCHASE 



FEEEDOM. 




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ORATION. 



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THE HISTORIC PURCHASE OF FREEDOM. 



AN ORATION 



DXIilTEBED BEPORB 



THE FEATEEN'ITT, 



IN THE MUSIC HALL, BOSTON, DEC. 22, 1859, 



THE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINTH ANNIVERSARY 



LANDING- OF THE PHGHEMS AT PLYIMOUTH. 



t'-^ 

P 



WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER. 





SECOND 


EDITION 




X^-OFCO 




BOSTON: 






WATiKER, 


^WISE 


^I^D 


COMF^^^JSTY, 


245 

\ 


Washingtoj} Street, 






18 


5 9. ' 







,ri&'. 



L 



PRINTKIl BT 

GEORGE C. RANI) J; A VERY. 



THE 






mSTOEIC PURCHASE OF FREEDOM. 



^ 



On a dark and bitter day, two hundred and thirty-nine years 
ago, the feet of our Pilgrim Forefathers pressed the rock of 
Plymouth. With bleeding hearts they had bidden adieu to 
home, friends, country. With the frailest defences they had 
dared the pitiless wastes of the winter sea, lifting their brave 
hymns and prayers above the howl of the storm. The dan- 
gers of the voyage escaped, by miraculous providence, they 
were now stepping on the frozen strand. They knelt and 
prayed ; and doubtless their devotions were as sincere as any 
that ever went up from purple cushions, amid the swinging of 
censers and the pealing of music. With heart-breaking 
memories of the far-away land they should not see again, 
they christened the bleak shore Nav England. With no sure 
resources, with only the smallest supply of food, the dead of 
December upon them, they gazed into an unmeasured wilder- 
ness. They had left a land of historic pride, abounding in 
every material comfort. They stood face to face with a pros- 
pect combining nearly everything calculated to appal. And 
yet, — and yet, as they looked around them on the freezing 
surge and the snow-loaded woods, and thought of the long 
conflict they must wage with the elements, with exile, famine, 
and the savage, it was with lofty gratitude; and they braced 
themselves with unfaltering resolve. 

One thing will explain the Avhole mystery. They had fled 
from bondage to freedom. They had left afar the persecutions 
of the bigots and tyrants of the old world. They were free 
now, to breathe the breath of heaven, to worship God accord- 



ing to their consciences, to speak tlicir honest thoughts ; and 
they hailed the rocky coast and the wintry desolation as the 
gates of a golden garden. They knew that there, if they sur- 
vived, they should be free ; and if they perished, their example 
would strengthen the immortal cause for which they died. 

The sufferings of the Pilgrims were a part of the price with 
which humanity has purchased the measure of freedom it pos- 
sesses. For it is a striking fact that man has always had to 
buy the enjoyment of his dearest privileges. His material 
comforts have been won through conflict with the forces of 
nature by study and toil. His personal enfranchisement and 
social safety have been won through conflict with human sin 
and cruelty. Every brave man who has scorned the decrees 
of injustice; every thinker who has uttered the meaning of 
radical principles ; every sage who has paced the dungeon 
floor ; every patriot wlio has laid his head on the block ; every 
martyr who has expired at tlie stake or on the gallows ; every 
reformer whose soul has been fired with the inspiration of 
truth, and melted with the love of his race, — in whatever land 
or age he was born and died, — has contributed his portion to 
the great sum of strife and endurance with which we have 
obtained the freedom we now enjoy. Honored, honored be 
their names for ever. Let them be greeted with thrills of 
admiration and tears of love. We know not how much we 
owe them. Their example has sown the nations with the lire- 
seed of heroism, made the earth a grander theatre, and our 
life a more exalted privilege. The value of the proper liber- 
ties of men, which we have inherited through their fidelity, 
wc arc unable to appreciate, because we have never been de- 
prived of them, and been spurned with the haughty foot of 
power. Once suffer that experience; then hew your way out 
of it, and, as you scan the annals of the long conflict with tyr- 
anny, you will shout in (.'xultation, "Freedom is tcorth all it has 
cost." 

God meant man should be free. It is written on his brow. 
It is stamped in the faculties of his mind. It burns in the 
instincts of his breast. The wings of the wind bring its iuvi- 



tations to his ear. The songs of the birds awaken its yearn- 
ings in his heart. And when he is made a slave, his nature so 
cruelly wronged, can any price be too dear for him to deliver 
himself with ? Free men, ask yourselves, if some nation of 
tyrants should cleave down your liberties and take from you 
the three great rights of human nature, — freedom of the body, 
to go and come as you will ; freedom of the mind, to read, 
reflect, and reason ; freedom of speech, to discuss the great 
subjects of opinion, — if these prerogatives were snatched 
away, and you were driven hither and thither, doomed to toil 
for your oppressors, a lock put upon your lips, your steps 
dogged by despots, would you not think deliverance cheaply 
purchased at any cost ? Oh ! you would be willing to pour out 
your blood like water. And when victory had crowned the 
struggle, and you were reclining in the shelter of your emanci- 
pated homes, whatever might be the sacrifice which compelled 
you to say, " Witli a great sum we have obtained this free- 
dom," you would add, with irrepressible enthusiasm, "But it is 
worth the price J ' ' 

For many ages freedom could only be held by physical force. 
Every independent nation maintained the liberty of its own 
citizens, while it ground its vanquished enemies under its feet. 
During those eras of might Slavery was a universal institution. 
The natural selfishness of the human heart, the instinctive dis- 
like of regular toil, and fondness for precedence and display, 
caused the rulers to impose the drudgery of life on their sub- 
jects, that they might flaunt in idleness or fight their foes and 
wear the spoils. The same power by which the conquerors 
were free, therefore, sealed the bondage of the defeated. But 
profounder conceptions of right and wrong, justcr sentiments 
of pity and affection, were never wholly wanting. The idea of 
the worth of humanity, the recognition of the rights of man, 
independent of circumstances, began to spread. Throughout 
the land of Israel, once in fifty years, the sacred jubilee struck, 
and in tent and court, on hillside and field, every fetter fell. 
A Greek philosopher, rebuked for giving alms to a shipwrecked 
pirate, replied, " I gave it not to him, but to Humanity." The 



wonderful line of Terence, " As a man I have an interest in 
whatever concerns humanity," electrified a theatre-full of Ro- 
mans. The promulgation of Christianity gave an unparalleled 
impulse to this movement of thought, by the manner in which 
it declared the relationship of men to God, to each other, and 
to immortality. From that period a belief in the right of every 
individual to freedom, won diffusion. It came to be felt that 
to be a man, was greater than to be a Roman citizen ; and a 
sufficient reason for exemption from bonds and scourgings. 
Wise and good men, willing to die, but determined to be free, 
denied the right of force between man and man, save for the 
restraint of crime. Protests were made against the arbitrary 
distinctions and the unjust immunities of rank. And so thought 
kindled thought, voice encouraged voice, step followed step, 
and the idea of absolute equality of privilege, the idea of a 
pure democratic government, with all its associated rights and 
duties, was gradually developed. 

That idea is the legitimate basis of this country. When the 
Pilgrims first touched the shore, they knelt, and with prayer 
consecrated the wilderness to freedom, religion and education. 
And, in face of the history of ancient slaveries, in defiance of 
the imprecations of tyrants and the forebodings of doubters, 
they set themselves at work to reduce those principles to prac- 
tice, and bequeathed the unfinished achievement for the piety 
of their children to perfect in a happier time. In the stormy 
and brightening course of human history, if any duty was ever 
laid on any nation, it is the specific work of this people to 
organize the idea of equal liberty, and show that in the eye of 
republican law, as in the revealed communion of God, man is 
the brother of man. Over the uncertain issues of that aim 
the beating of four hundred million human hearts is with us, in 
hope and fear, from every part of the globe. For it is on 
account of the relation we sustain to this end, towards which 
the providential drift ol' jirogress has been from the first, that 
we have awakened so deep an interest and attained so lofty 
a position among the nations of the earth. 

And now, after our wonderful prosperity, shall we repu- 



diatc the holy task, when the poor little Mayflower, which once 
shivered on the icy strand, has spread its corolla until the spray 
of two oceans and the dew of a hemisphere wet its petals ? It 
seems as if all the voices of history were calling us, as if all 
the outstretched hands of prophecy were pointing us, here, iu 
this magnificent climax of opportunities, to exhibit the long- 
baflfled hopes of our race in a corresponding climax of fruitions, 
by consummating, at last, that historic purchase of freedom to 
which, in other times, so many precious offerings have been 
made, in the thoughts and experiments of philosophers, the 
sighs and groans of prisoners and exiles, the tears and prayers 
of saints, the blood of battle-fields and scaffolds, and the 
uugathered ashes of martyrs. 

And yet, paradoxical as it is. Slavery, in its most unmiti- 
gated form, prevails among us as the chief institution ; waving 
its unhallowed emblems over the very capital of the country, 
desecrated into a shambles for men. The existence of slavery 
here and now implies what it always implied every where, 
namely, the selfish injustice of the strong, and the wrongful 
degradation of the weak. This is too evident to need any 
detail of proof A few words, however, aiming to set the 
statement in the light of a moral demonstration, may not be 
superfluous. Is it not an axiom that no free and enlightened 
man would be willing to be held in bondage himself? would 
think it reconcilable with right that he should be placed in the 
power of an irresponsible master, who might seize the fruit of 
his labor, tear him from his wife and children, keep him from 
education, and spurn him with contempt ? So long, then, as 
he holds others in that condition, he violates the rule which is 
the fundamental principle of natural duty, and the very sub- 
stance of Christian morals: "Do unto others as you would 
have them do unto you." 

The risks the slaves run, the sufferings they undergo, in 
hope of freedom, prove that the better portion of them are 
not contented ; that, debased as they have been, they still feel 
the truth of the exclamation, " Ah, Slavery, disguise thyself as 
thou wilt, thou art a bitter draught ! " Although studiously 



8 



kept ill ignorance, to the great majority of them all outside of 
their own region being preserved an unknown realm, every 
year upwards of a thousand successfully flee from their house 
of bondage, confronting perils and pains that would make the 
stoutest of us pause and shrink, literally running the gaunt- 
let of a hundred martyrdoms in the desperate hope to win the 
prize of an unshackled manhood. In this bare fact, what vol- 
umes of revelation are compressed ! Whenever the idea of 
escape dawns on their minds, all that is within them cries out 
for libci-ty. A voice from heaven says to their souls, '' Sleep 
no more !" When their higher instincts awake, it must be so. 
Catch the king of the air when he soars with the thunder be- 
neath his wings and the sun in his eye ; shut him in a dark 
cage, and expect him neither to pine nor to strike his limits : 
but expect not man to be contented under chains and insults, 
unless, by ages of brutalization, he has first been robbed of 
every high attribute of his nature. The existence of slavery 
;among us, consequently, implies the unrighteous exercise of 
power on one side, and the endurance of unmerited wrongs 
on tlic other. 

Since these things arc so, the abolition of slavery from her 
borders is the paramount duty of the country : a duty over- 
riding collateral considerations, and neither to be evaded by 
sophistry nor set aside by difficulties. This proposition 1 
maintain with the following reasons. First, slavery should be 
ended because of its sinfulness. Forcibly seizing a man and 
■converting him into a beast of burden or a tool of convenience, 
using him as an ox or as a hoe, — surely this is the climax of 
injury. Is it not the sum of all wrongs to rob man of his 
own nature — the uses of his soul and the ends of his life ? 
How can there be room for further wrong, when a soul is made 
a thing? By a tyrant's whim to suppress a person's responsi- 
bility, by force or fraud to appropriate the total use of a 
being endowed with free powers, and set amidst the opportu- 
nities of the world to work out the beginnings of an immortal 
destiny — if this be not a sin, then sin is an empty name. 
Yet such is the essence of slavery. A system built of mil- 



lions of sucli instances can be but one huge aggregation of 
wrong and shame. It strikes a fatal blow at the centre of 
ethics by destroying personality, blasphemes God by defacing 
his image, and hoists the flood-gate for crime and horror by 
giving full swing to egotistic power. The defenders of the 
system have sought to reverse the sentence of condemnation 
pronounced on it, by the conscience of the civilized world, as 
a sin. But in vain, as the briefest examination will show. 

The slaveholders wishing to enjoy the fruits of the earth 
and the honors of society without the pains of earning them, 
hit upon this happy device — to put all the labor on their 
slaves, and appropriate all the luxury to themselves. When 
we go to the bottom of the subject we shall find that this is 
the genuine basis of slavery. Ashamed to own that they sus- 
tain slavery simply as ministering to their ease and aggrandize- 
ment, the slaveholders look about for some other ground on 
which to rest their advocacy. 

The first plea by which the Slave Power seeks to justify itself 
from the charge of sin, is, that it is actuated by a regard for 
the good of the African race. In their native state, they 
are savages, heathen, inconceivably debased, eternally lost. 
Brought to this country, they are civilized, Christianized, 
enriched with comforts, and blessed with salvation. It is for 
the sake of thus redeeming a race incapable of saving them- 
selves, the slaveholders sometimes say, that they support the 
institution. The hypocrisy of such an excuse, in general, is 
self-evident. One-tenth part of the effort expended in reducing 
Africans to foreign service might, ere now, had that been the 
design, have civilized and Christianized the whole of them at 
home. Massachusetts alone contributes more for missionary 
purposes than the whole of the Slave States : at least it was 
so in eighteen hundred and fifty-five, by over twenty-six thou- 
sand dollars. The South does not send teachers, machinery, 
books, seeds, to Africa. So far as its energy and wealth are 
turned in that direction, they are spent in sending piratical 
ships, with the outfit and rig of despotism, to ply along the 
unhappy coast their murderous trade of theft. The aim is to 



10 



gain labor and money for the slaveholders, not to give knowl- 
edge, virtue, and happiness to the Negroes. Any other pre- 
tence is usually a conscious lie — not hiding the sin, but adding 
to it. We might believe the Slave Power animated by a regard 
for the good of its incompetent subjects, if we saw it acting 
accordingly in its domestic policy. But when we observe that 
instead of trying to qualify their slaves for a higher condition, 
by training them to knowledge, purity, enterprise, and self- 
respect, their masters studiously hold them in the lowest de- 
basement, drive them to their tasks under the lash, keep 
them to breed like cattle, make it a crime to teach one of 
them to read, use religion as a means of enhancing their value 
on the block, separate families without mercy; — then we sec 
through this sham, and know that the motive of the slavehold- 
ers is not to benefit their slaves, but to spare their own mus- 
cles and feed fat their own pride. Talent, energy, religious 
faith, and love, in the sight of truth, are the right royal eman- 
cipation of their possessors. In the sight of the slaveholder, 
such qualities augment the price of a slave, and, increasing the 
chances of his escape, awaken suspicion, and often cause the 
subject thus unfortunately gifted, to bo sold into some more 
hopeless distance of bondage. When the slaveholder, acting 
as the paternal guardian of his slaves, tries in every way to 
increase the dignity of their endowments, and the elevation 
of their joys, emancipates them as fast as they are fit for free- 
dom, retaining only those who are not yet competent, then 
only will we confess that his conduct is benevolence, and 
not sin. 

The other plea by which the Slave Power would ward off 
the charge of sin, is, that the Negroes arc not men, but a spe- 
cies of animals, with a claim upon our protection. Therefore, 
by the fitness of things, we may hold them to service. If we 
shelter and feed them for the work they do, we are guiltless 
of wrong as when we capture a wild horse or buffalo. 

The statement is not usually made with such bluntness, but 
the meaning is this : slavery is no wrong, because the Negro is 
no man, and, therefore, has no rights which man is bound to 



11 



respect. The inhumau sophistry of this doctrine is obvious to 
every impartial person. But to disprove it to the conviction 
of one who accepts it; is hard, on account of the obtuseness of 
his moral sense and the thick environment of his mind with 
prejudice. If a person does not know that one and one make 
two, it is a difficult problem to demonstrate it to him. It is 
like trying to make clearness clear. The denial of humanity 
to the Negro does not rest on any argument of logic or morals 
to be refuted by philosophical reasoning or ethical illustration. 
Argument is superseded. It rests merely on prejudices of 
sentiment. To this perverted sentiment it is a most formida- 
ble matter. The best we can do is to set forth the truth in a 
few statements that will command assent as axioms of obser- 
vation and consciousness. 

In the first place, the Negro is a man, and by virtue of his 
humanity endowed with human rights, because he has the form 
and faculties of a man, thinks the thoughts, feels the feelings, 
aspires towards the prizes and ends of a man. How does the 
fact that he is black alter the case ? If Negroes are to be en- 
slaved because they are black, why not Indians because they 
are red, and Chinese because they are yellow, and Sikhs 
because they are blue? The prejudice against color or blood, 
bitter as it is, is never actually the basis of denying humanity 
to the Negro ; for thousands of slaves are held as such who arc 
whiter than their owners, and in whose veins runs more 
American than African blood. Their masters keep them, not 
because they think them black animals, but because they know 
them profitable property. 

That the Negro slave is a man, is furthermore proved by 
every spiritual test which can be applied. He hears a simple 
gospel sermon from the text " That he, by the grace of God, 
should taste of death for every man." He is penetrated, 
made conscious of sin, smitten with divine love. He repents 
and prays in faith, with groans and weeping; he receives 
pardoning grace and a new heart, and goes on his way a re- 
generate creature, rejoicing in the Lord. Can an animal 
experience the profound mysteries of the Christian religion ? 



12 

His master has resolved to sell him into remote service and 
eternal separation from all he loves. He knows it in anguish 
and terror, and with mighty throbbings to escape. He thinks 
he will kill his sleeping master and flee for freedom. He 
stands over the helpless victim. His fingers feel along the 
edge and handle of the uplifted axe. The thought strikes him, 
however vast the stake, will it justify murder? He quells 
the devil in his heart, lays the weapon down, creeps softly away, 
and when his master falls sick, forgives him, and by assiduous 
nursing saves his life. Can an animal, from a sense of 
allegiance to moral right, resist temptation, forgive injury, and 
do good for evil ? 

It is midnight in the woods of Alabama. The moonlight 
falls calmly through the straggling clouds. Hark ! what is that 
pressing through the under-brush, climbing over the fallen logs, 
heading towards the North? It is a slave, with two little 
black children in a tow knapsack on his back, and, a few paces 
behind, two larger children and a woman toiling after. They 
have travelled fourteen nights, hiding and resting by day. 
Their provisions are gone, and they are nearly starved. A 
little voice cries, "Father, mother's dying!" He takes the 
knapsack from his back into his arms, and hurries to his wife, 
who has fainted from exhaustion. Sobbing, and his heart nigh 
to break, he raises her up, and strives to restore and encourage 
her. What ! husband, wife, children, hearts, tears, self-denial, 
mutual fidelity through terrible straits and suflerings ! Surely 
they cannot be mere animals ! 

Arriving in Canada with his family, he builds a home, and, by 
industry, prospers. His heart melts at the remembrance of his 
old friends and brothers left behind in bondage. He girds up 
his soul with a heroes purpose and starts on the under-ground 
railroad to their rescue. Trudging on his way by night, sud- 
denly a meteoric ^liowcr bursts through the heavens with 
streams of falling stars. He thinks the last day is at hand. 
X'ausing a moment to assure liimself that he is engaged in a 
just uiiderlakiiig, he ealndy continues on his way in moment- 
ary expeetalion of the final trunii)et. Having a sense of im- 



13 



mortality, keeping about his duty, consecrated by sentiments 
of rectitude, love and faith fearlessly to meet the judgment-seat 
of Christ, can he be anything less than a man ? The slaveholder 
himself acknowledges the Negro to be a man when he holds 
him responsible for a man's duties. The supporters of slavery 
are therefore bound to abolish it because it is a sin. 

They are bound to abolish it, also, because of its i^ernicmis 
effects. It preys on the best virtues of a Christian manhood, 
blunts the sense of justice, revives the features of feudalism, 
perpetuates the worst qualities of a patrician aristocracy, puts 
disgrace on free labor, blights the soil on which it breathes, 
mocks the refined civilization of the age, and impedes the pro- 
gress of the world. 

The structure of slaveholding society, that is, plantation life, 
necessitates a sparse population. It is, therefore, fatal to our 
common school system, to our immense support and circula- 
tion of newspapers, magazines, books, to academies and lyce- 
ums. Wherever it prevails general education is at a low ebb. 
Its leading men, representatives and senators, are sometimes 
known to be literally unable to read or write. In Massachu- 
setts only one white adult in five hundred and seventeen is 
unable to read and write ; in South Carolina one in seven j 
in Virginia one in five ; in North Carolina one in three. It 
nourishes feroaity of temper. This must be so in the nature 
of the case, and observation of facts demonstrates it. Nearly 
every man carries his dirk and revolver, and duels and free 
fights are ordinary occurrences. The poor whites, who exist 
between the slaves and the slaveholders, are notoriously the 
most unprincipled and reckless of men. The Slave States in 
comparison with the Free States are in a condition of anarchy 
and barbarism. We are in the nineteenth century, they in 
the eleventh. In proportion to the white population fifty 
times as much fighting and murdering are done in the South 
as in the North. Statistics show it. Slavery leads to the most 
appalling licentiousness. That slaveholders frequently place 
their own children and children's children under the overseer's 
lash, and on the auctioneer's block, is a fact which cannot be 



14 



questioned. Every one of the worse Slave States is an enor- 
mous free brothel ; where it sickens the unperverted traveller 
to see the betrayal of that practical amalgamation against 
which the hypocrites cry so in theory, hanging its banner on 
the outer wall of the gradually bleaching faces of the victim- 
class. 

The pampering attentions and idleness in which slave- 
holders are brought up, foster habits of dependence and shift- 
lessness. The isolation and leisure in which they live, make 
time hang heavy on them. Their vaunted hospitality is some- 
times as much an escape from their deadly ennui as it is a 
generous virtue. Another refuge frequently found from their 
vacant weariness is in drunkenness and gambling. Owing to 
the peculiar force of the temptations, these vices prevail in 
the South to an extent unknown among us. Here only the 
dregs of a small class indulge in them ; there the proudest 
aristocrats, the mass of the gentry, habitually drink and gam- 
ble. In consequence of the lack of ambitious energy and 
skilled industry that follows slavery, it is a cause of impover- 
ishment and decay. You have only to take the census return, 
and compare the variety and value of the intellectual and 
industrial products of the Free States with those of the 
Slave States, to be satisfied of this. Where in the whole 
region consecrated to freedom can anything fee found corre- 
sponding to the melancholy spectacle so often exhibited in the 
States given to slavery, — plantations of exhausted fields, with 
their broken-down fences, and their little villages of tenements 
abandoned to the wild bird and the weather, silence and 
decay ? Jamestown had an earlier start than Plymouth, yet 
to-day it is nothing but a heap of ruins. Virginia had incom- 
parable advantages of climate and soil over New England. 
How do they stand now ? The one, haughty, impoverished, 
half imbecile, her old patrician seats deserted and tumbling, 
awakening the ])ity of a Yankee colonizer, fills the earth with 
the stench of her tobacco crop, and makes humanity faint with 
tlir ])i-onigacy of Imt shivc-breeding. TIic other, ])riulit, busy, 
intelligent, virtuous, the ])ridc; and example of the world, sup- 



15 



plies the other States with machinery, literature, and educators ; 
and causes the smokes of a million free and happy homes to 
streak the winter air where then only the scattered breaths of 
a few wigwam fires curled above the woods. A writer, in 
whose knowledge and judgment implicit confidence may be 
placed, says : " Had slavery been prohibited in Texas from 
the time of its annexation, I believe its export of cotton would 
be greater than it is; its demand from, and contribution to, 
commerce, would be ten times what it is; it would possess 
ten times the length of railroad, ten times as many churches, 
ten times as many schools, and a hundred times as many 
school-children as it now has." The Slave States, then, ought 
to abolish slavery, because it exerts a manifold pernicious 
influence on all their own interests, and on the world. 

Another reason why they ought to do this is because of the 
danger involved in its continuance. Slavery is the serious peril 
of our country ; the one source of bitterness and excitement, 
threatening to quench our patriotic hopes. In this great dis- 
sension, one party must yield. It should be done by those 
who are in the wrong, done gracefully while there is virtue in 
doing it. Not only because morality and their own interests 
require it, should they abandon their defence, but also because 
the Party of Freedom must inevitably prevail. It is merely a 
question of time. Does any one suppose the earth can be 
turned around, and made to roll back in its orbit ? Since 
through the laws of political economy, the destinies of race 
and climate, and the ordained advance of public opinion, the 
advocates of slavery will be compelled to cease their hostility 
to freedom, while the friends of freedom can never forego 
their opposition to slavery, it behooves the former to confess 
their error and make ready as speedily as possible to repair 
it. Until that be done, it is certain we can have no stable 
peace. So long as the clamor for new slave territory con- 
tinues, the tocsin of strife will shudder the air. While the in- 
stitution survives, the conscience of Christendom will thunder 
against it, and danger will lower in uneasy gloom over our 
heads, if it does not burst in volcanic storm between our 
hearths. 



16 



For these reasons, and others which might be urged, it is 
the duty of the slaveholders, in whose immediate control it 
lies, to abolish slavery. Nor are tliere any obstacles so for- 
midable as to justify them in not commencing the performance 
of this duty. The only real obstacle is the infatuated obsti- 
nacy and selfishness of the owner, and of those in league with 
him. Let us look at the flimsy excuses they sometimes try to 
palm off. 

Emancipation, they say, would be fraught with frightful con- 
sequences : slaughter and rapine would devastate the land. 
The cry is absurd. Docs it turn man into a fiend to restore 
him his rights and treat him with kindness ? What relevancy 
has the carnage of St, Domingo, that it should be lugged in ? 
There, a prodigious majority of savage helots, infuriated by dia- 
bolical abuse, rose in arms on a small minority of divided and 
panic-struck masters. Here, it is asked that four millions of 
mild, timid, helpless, affectionate slaves should be blessed with 
freedom in the midst of nine millions of the superior race, all 
united, armed, and chivalrous. The comparison is an imperti- 
nence. Such an experiment has been tried, too, witli perfect 
.■success, under far more dangerous circumstances than ours. 
In fact, must there not be incomparably less ground for alarm 
beneath the sway of freedom, where mutual respect and inter- 
est make all friends, than where thousands are goaded by 
wrongs ? That fear of insurrection which occasionally frights 
the South from its propriety, would then really cease, instead 
of growing. 

Again, it is asked. What can they do ? They have inherited 
the institution ; it is their misfortune to be fatally saddled with 
it. What can they do ? Ah ! if they do not know what they 
can do, why do they pass laws making it a penal offence for a 
master to manumit a slave? In the first place, they can indi- 
vidually discuss the question itself of what they can do. They 
■can inquire how to soften and lessen the evil, instead of seek- 
ing how to deepen and spread it. In the second })lace, they 
can call Southern Conventions to take mutual counsel as to the 
means of its mitigation and end, as they do call Southern Con- 



17 



ventions to devise the means of treason and disunion, and the 
rc-opcning of the African slave trade. In the third place, they 
can instantly banish the whole system from the District of Co- 
lumbia, let the common capital of the entire country cease to 
be a " Southern city,"^ and purge it of those sights which may 
make the Embassadors of Russia and Turkey point the finger 
of scorn at us. In the fourth place, they can rescind their 
barbaric laws whereby it is made a crime to teach slaves to 
read their Bibles, and kindly throw open to them some initia- 
tory opportunities of education and improvement. In the 
fifth place, they can make the institution of marriage sacred 
and inviolable, and decree that every child of a white father 
shall be free. In the sixth place they can enact that husbands 
and wives, parents and children, shall not be torn from each 
other by the fate of the auction-block. In the seventh place, 
they can make their slaves a little allowance of wages, the 
humble germ of greater things to come, with independence in 
the vista. And when these things have been done, other 
things will appear : for the way of duty, once entered, always 
grows brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. 

Finally, it is objected, an act of universal emancipation 
would reduce the slaveholders to beggary. How the ignoble 
strain is shamed by the historic cry of our merchant-prince of 
Beacon Hill, " If the good of my country requires it, hum Boston 
and tnalie John Hancock a bcsrscar!'' Whether is it better, 
that millions be kept slaves forever, or that thousands be made 
poor, with ample openings to enrich themselves again ? Will 
any decent man affirm the approach of temporary poverty 
through sublime dcvotedness to principle, as a reason why he 
should refrain from justice and perpetuate sin? Besides, the 
plea is not true. The increased production effected under the 
stimulus of freedom would outbalance the wages paid for the 
labor now wrung from unwilling muscles. A thorough com- 
parison, on the basis of Do Bow's Census Compendium, shows 
that the North, with half the cultivated land and two-thirds 
the laborers, produces annually two hundred and twenty-seven 
million dollars worth of agricultural returns more than the 



18 



South : twice as mucli for each acre, and more than twice the 
value for each person engaged in the work. The abolition of 
slavery would enrich, not pauperize, the South. The sloth of 
patrician pride, which would then liave to arouse itself, opposes 
the auspicious change. Throw open the superior climate and 
soil where slavery reigns, to the wholesome energies of free 
institutions, — let that intelligent and hardy spirit which has 
lined the banks of New England's cold streams with manufac- 
tories, and clothed her sterile fields with harvests, and made 
every granite hillock blossom with a school-house or a church, 
have the same opportunity in the slave-region, and it will 
begin to flourish with a prosperity it has not known. Did the 
masters desire to abolish slavery, all difficulties of this sort 
would vanish. Were it necessary, or were the South to 
approach the Free States in a fraternal spirit, they would no 
doubt compromise so far as to make a general contribution 
towards huying this grand enfranchisement. Valuing the 
slaves, as property, at fourteen hundred million dollars, the 
amount spent in this country in pernicious dissipation alone, 
in less than five years would cover the cost of their pecuniary 
emancipation. What a glorious capping would thus be put on 
the historic purchase of freedom so nobly begun in earlier 
ages, left for us more nobly to complete in this ! 

But every one familiar with the present state of the case, 
knows that the South, instead of fulfilling this duty, the abol- 
ishment of slavery, and thus wiping the great stain from the 
national escutcheon, will pursue the opposite policy. Infatua- 
atcd with the pernicious institution, inflated by the hauglity 
conceit it engenders, identifying every interest and passion 
with its preservation, the slaveholders will hug it to their 
bosoms with the tenacity of death, straining every nerve, de- 
vising every expedient to broaden and eternize it. In tlic 
pristine days of the Republic, almost every statesman. North 
and South, confessed it to be an evil, and both desired and ex- 
pected its gradual diminution, and its final disappearance at 
no distant day. But all that is changed. Demoralized and 
inflamed l)y its fruits, their better sentiments perverted and 



19 



wrought up by it to the pitch of virtual insanity, the body of 
slaveholders to-day — headed by a swarm of drunken and fa- 
natical politicians, and tailed by a crew of renegade ruinisters 
— with one voice declare that slavery is a Divine ordinance, 
and an intrinsic good, and as such to be transmitted in per- 
petuity. 

The retired Southern friends of our Northern conservatives, 
whose letters are occasionally published, do not represent the 
convictions, passions and intentions of the Slave Power. 
These are represented by the persons chosen to fight its 
battles in Congress, by the public meetings, the mobs, the res- 
olutions, the newspapers of the South. All these concur in 
avowing that slavery is a blessing never to be surrendered. 
And those who hold contrary opinions are awed and bullied 
into silence by a despotism as mean and brutal as ever existed 
on the earth. It is the rarest thing for one of them to be 
heard of. On peril of their homes and lives they dare not so 
much as peep or mutter. Is the typical case of the Under- 
wood family forgotten ? 

The Richmond Examiner says, " Southern men should act 
as if the canopy of heaven were inscribed with a covenant, in 
letters of fire, that the negro is our property, and ours for- 
ever ; is to be kept hard at work — and in rigid subjection all 
his days ; is never to be emancipated." Senator Brown of 
Mississippi, at a barbecue given in his honor at Hazlehurst, 
on the eleventh of October, 1858, used the following words: 
" I want Central America, and I would take it by force. I 
want Cuba, and we must have it, we must take it. I want 
Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States. 
And I want them all to plant and spread slavery there. I 
think slavery is a good thing per se ; I believe it to be a great 
moral, social, and political blessing, and I think it is of divine 
origin. I said so formerly in the House of Representatives at 
Washington, and I say so now. I would spread the blessings 
of slavery, like the religion of our Divine Master, to the ut- 
termost ends of the earth. Rebellious and wicked as the 
Yankees have been, I would extend it even to them. When 



20 



•with a greater expansion of territory^ we need more black 
laborers, I ■would re-open the slave trade with Africa." The 
same doctrine is most shamelessly advocated in the Texas 
Almanac for 1858. Senator Hammond of South Carolina, 
also, in an elaborate paper copiously circulated at the South 
in October, 1858, uses the following language: "The inevita- 
ble fate of the slaveholders of the South is to conduct the 
question to its conclusion. I believe "wc can conquer. After 
■what has been achieved by a divided South, now that it is al- 
most thorougldy united j now that we have a President and 
his Cabinet, a majority in both Houses of Congress, a Su- 
preme Court of the United States, and still hosts of allies in 
the Free States, all substantially concurring with us in our 
construction of the Constitution, weowe it to ourselves and the 
world to cast aside all fears, and move forward to the over- 
throw of every sentimental scheme for organizing labor, car- 
rying with us the Constitution, and, if we can, the Union." 

It would be easy to multiply similar utterances from sepa- 
rate sources all over the South, to almost any extent.^ These 
expressions indeed appear to represent the almost unanimous 
feeling of the slaveholders. In such a state of determina- 
tion, and while the acquisition of one new Slave State adds 
ten per cent to the valuation of their chattels, and clearly 
prolongs the lease of their power, it is both obvious of itself 
and proved by the history of the past few years that they will 
spare no efforts in their power, open or secret, fair or foul, by 
votes, by persuasion, by plots, by frauds, by bribery, by bludg- 
eons, by duel-murders, by civil war, not merely to preserve 
the institution where it is, but to extend it where it is not. 

With this understanding of the truth of the case, what arc 
our duties? What ought the citizens of the Free States, as 
subjects of the same national government, as men, and as 
Christians, to do in relation to slavery ? Our first duty is to 
" reincmljcr them that are in bonds as bound with them," to 
acquaint ourselves with the condition of these victims of op- 
])ressi()n and sympathize with them in their hard estate. To 
sliut ourselves u\) in carelessness as to the wrongs and mis- 



21 



eries of others, to harden ourselves with an inhuman selfish- 
ness against the appeals of our fellow creatures, is a crime 
against both nature and religion. Unquestionably, " Weep 
with them that weep, and rejoice with them that rejoice;" 
" Love your neighbor as yourself; " " Who is weak, and I am 
not weak? who is offended, and I burn not? " are essential 
utterances of the Gospel. The slaves are our neighbors, our 
brethren. The best principles of humanity harmonize with 
the heavenly evangel of Christ, and leave us no alternative 
but to think of them and feel for them as we should wish them 
to think of us and feel for us in an exchange of circumstances. 
They are kept ignorant and degraded. The ordinance of 
marriage is made a nullity among them. They are forced to 
toil all their lives without reward. At the slightest provoca- 
tion, if it be the pleasure of an irascible owner, or a drunken 
overseer, they are beaten, mangled, perhaps murdered, without 
any chance of redress. Many an instance is known where slaves 
have received from five hundred to a thousand lashes, and ex- 
pired under tlie infliction ; and the administering fiends have 
gone unrebuked. If, when their lot becomes absolutely intol- 
erable, and some dawning star of hope stirs the embers of 
liberty in their souls, they try to escape, they are deliberately 
shot down, or set upon by blood-hounds and torn in pieces, and 
one cry of bravo ! rises throughout the whole slave region. One 
Southern newspaper announces the sale, at public auction, of 
a pack of ten blood-hounds for fifteen hundred and forty dol- 
lars. Another one contains this advertisement: " I have two 
of the finest blood-hounds in the southwest for catching Ne- 
groes. They will take the trail twelve hours after the fugitive 
has passed, and catch him with ease. I am ready at all times 
to catch runaway Negroes." Suppose the white population of 
the State of New York were reduced to slavery by some for- 
eign power and treated thus ? How should we feel about it ? 
Will you give a valid reason, on grounds of morality, why we 
ought not to feel the same for the black population of Georgia ? 
We cannot avoid the duty of sympathizing with the slaves as 
they groan under a relentless tyranny, or as they laugh in pit- 
eous unconsciousness of their dem-adatiou. 



22 



Secondly, it is our duty to free ourselves from all complicity 
with this system of siu and inhumanity, to extricate ourselves 
from every legal obligation to participate in it or help it. 
Having no interest of our own in it, there is no just reason 
why, by suffering the continuance of a wicked political bond, 
we should be forced to stand guard around it and contribute 
to its nourishment. Unless we are willing to partake its guilt, 
and share the thunderbolts it invokes, it is high time we re- 
leased ourselves from those statutory ties whereby wc actually 
countenance and comfort it. Before God wc are bound to 
wash our hands from it, and stand aloof from it, leaving those 
who love it to take care of it, and to stand alone beneath its 
infamy. When we have outgrown a sin and banished it from 
our soil, shall we assist others in the perpetration of it? 
Have they any right to command us to help them sustain their 
iniquities ? If one of us was flying from bondage, haggard with 
exhaustion, his little child on his back, his terror-stricken 
and famishing wife by his side, and after reaching a land of 
freedom should meet a fellow-creature who refused to feed or 
shelter him, but seized him and his poor tremblers, and sent 
them back to the hell whence they had fled, should we not in- 
voke the maledictions of Heaven on the inhuman monster, and 
almost look to see the unscabbarded lightnings of God smite 
him where he stood ? 

The slave in the mines of Brazil, who found in his washing- 
trench a diamond weighing over seventeen carats, received his 
freedom. Certainly the slave on the plantations of the iSuuth, 
who finds in his soul a diamond of manly aspiration and 
courage potent enough to guide him to our Northern homes, 
far better deserves the boon; and never shall our hands take 
it from him. If Christ, and the Gospel, and Humanity, and 
Morality, and Piety, and the Fugitive Slave, and the Cup of 
Cold Water, and the Good Samaritan, all bathed in the splen- 
dors of God, arc grouped together there, on the right; and the 
Union, and the Constitution, and the Slaveholder, and the 
Code of Tyranny, and the unmuzzled Blood-hound, and the 
Whip and Handcuff, all shrouded in a gloom of threats and 



23 



horror, are grouped together there, on the left, — no matter 
what the penalties are, we know our place. And as we take it, 
all the sentiments of our souls whisper approval, in unison with 
a voice issuing from the judgment seat of Christ, " Inasmuch 
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have 
done it unto me." 

What can be clearer than our duty to secure the repeal of 
every constitutional clause, and the repeal of every unconsti- 
tutional enactment, which requires us to render service to 
slavery ? While it stays at home, and takes care of itself, it is 
hard enough for us to tolerate it even there, until the growth of 
purer opinion or some providential emergence, — such as the 
monopoly of the cotton and sugar markets by better and 
cheaper growths on free soil, — ends it. We cannot do more. 
We cannot run on its errands, and feed its blood-hounds, and 
seize its victims, and lick the dust for it. Nor can we permit 
it to do these things for itself within our limits. By the princi- 
ples of moral truth emblazoned in the New Testament, by 
the privileges of humanity won through ages of struggle and 
sacrifice, by the laws of the living God incarnated in our 
hearts, and enrolled through the sky in star-script and immortal 
fire, — let there be no tyrants hunting men on the banks of our 
New England rivers ; no clanking of chains for men within 
sight of the school-houses of New England; no setting up of 
auctions for men within sight of the church-altars of New 
England; no legalized stealing of men by kidnapper packs, 
disturbing the holy dust as they yell past the graves of our 
dead heroes, within sight of the battle-field monuments of New 
England. 

Our third duty is to take an active part in all justifiable 
measures for relieving the slave, and abolishing the institution. 
Neither using violence nor fraud, nor recommending them, we 
are to leave no peaceful and honorable means unemployed. 
When men are foully injured, is it not a duty arising from the 
first axiom of Christian ethics, for every man to do whatever 
he can innocently do to restore their rights, and to heal their 
wounds ? If we were in the place of the slaves we should 



24 



tliink it tlic duty of all free men to plead for us, and aid us. 
In the sweet name of Jesus, can we deem it right to spurn the 
Golden Rule and refuse to do thus for others ? We are 
recreant, it seems to me that we are recreant to the chief 
obligation of our position, if we do not take a public stand 
against this public sin, and improve every means to purify and 
strengthen tlie sentiment of the Free States on the subject. If 
we suflcr our mouths to be muffled, and our pens to be with- 
drawn, by the sneers and threats and lies of a coalition of 
ruffians and trimmers, who sink everything else in a supreme 
desire for the spoils of office and the profits of trade, — whether 
they ai-e rallied in mobs, or gathered in a party, or seated in 
editorial chairs, or commanding the dainty and heartless pre- 
cincts of fashion, if we do not defy them, — the glory has fled 
from our temples and cliffs, and we are fit to be trampled. 
The vital hope of those reforms which aim at the redemption 
of man from oppression, is the creation of a magnetic public 
opinion to envelop the world like a protecting atmosphere; 
condensing on one point, whenever required, the dynamic 
shocks diffused through all. Consequently we are obligated to 
oppose every wrongful institution in the country, and endeavor 
to concentrate an overwhelming public condemnation against 
it. If American slavery were a self-remedying evil, or if its 
advocates were disposed gradually to abolish it, an easy 
conscience might find an excuse for refusing to meddle with it. 
But when it nourishes itself, when its friends tower and bluster, 
and work to spread it, and swear they will always continue to 
do so, the case is altered, and but one course left for a right- 
eous and liumane man; namely, to resist it with firm conscience 
at every point of its aggressions until it retreats, and to assail 
it with sound argument at every point of its vulncrableness 
until it surrenders. 

Many respectable men affirm, in deprecation of tliis agita- 
tion, that it results in unmixed evil, exasperating the South to 
an insane tenacity. Even if so, the inference is not sound. 
Shall Nathan refrain to lift liis finger and cry, " Thou art the 
man," for l"ear David will be enraged and cleave clo:?cr to iiis 



25 

sin ? But I vehemently disbelieve, that had no abolitionist 
sound been heard, whole States would before now have abol- 
ished slavery. The reverse is the truth. The fiercer determi- 
nation of the South is a natural growth from its own pampered 
spirit, and from the increased value of the property. When 
in contact with the benightedness and ferocity of Southern 
civilization, we place the fact that the winning of one new 
territory to their domain instantly adds a hundred million 
dollars to their wealth, and helps them towards a preponder- 
ance of power, who believes that slavery would have died 
there, had Mr. Garrison not been born here? In his seventh 
of March speech, Daniel Webster says, (Quid ait medicus ? 
Nihil de vcneno !) "What have been the causes which have 
created so new a feeling in favor of slavery in the South ? I 
suppose, sir, this is owing to the rapid growth of the COTTON 
plantations." The plea which asks us to serve our cause by 
beino- dumb, is the sophistry of cowardice and indifference. 
Have we not, with our own eyes, seen a definite and solid good 
won by determined agitation ? Like Venus from the foam of 
the sea, the Goddess of Liberty rose out of the dust of the 
commotion in Kansas ! 

It is clear that there are but three issues for this dilating 
controversy. First, through the singleness of purpose and 
avalanche will of the South, and through an increased ser- 
vility in the North, the slave power may triumph, and, in its 
supremacy, make slavery national in usage as it already is in 
theory. My God, shall this ever be permitted? Among the 
green hills of Vermont shall gangs of Negroes be driven 
afield beneath the constellation of the Whip ? Shall the click 
of the planter's revolver, the snap of the overseer's lash, and 
the clank of the chattel's gyves, be added to the sounds of 
our Massachusetts forge, and loom, and press, while some 
meet successor of the insolent and lugubrious Toombs calls 
the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill, and great 
Warren's statue crimsons through the marble? If that ever 
happen, farewell, a long farewell to the yearning expectations 
of mankind. For in the dismal future following, is seen, far 



26 



away, a horoscope of demoralization, impoverishment, brutality, 
and rottenness, sinking off into the night. We must prevent 
that. It is our duty to prevent it. A bottomless damnation 
awaits us if we do not prevent it. Unquestionably we shall 
prevent it: although Charles O'Conor docs stand up in the 
free city of New York and say, "Slavery is just, wise, and 
benificent, and ought to be perpetuated." Indignant ghost of 
O'Conncll, why didst thou not arise and blast thy recreant 
countryman ! Insulted shades of Curran, Grattan, Emmet, 
why were ye not invoked to rise and lay the renegade Irishman 
who dared to utter in the face of a free people sentiments of 
such transcendant atrocity ! 

Secondly, in consequence of the deepening exasperation of 
feeling, and widening opposition of interest, between the advo- 
cates of slavery and its assailants, the Union may be shattered 
by a fratricidal convulsion, and the question settled by vio- 
lence. Should such a crisis of desperation arrive, however 
rent, blackened, drenched the confederacy, there can be no 
doubt as to the result. The right and the strength and the 
certain victory are all on one side, where stands the solemn 
group of the Pilgrims, — Carver, Bradford, Winslow, Brews- 
ster, John Alden and Priscilla, the Standishes, both Miles and 
Hose, — pointing down to the group of their great Revolu- 
tionary sons — Washington, Franklin, Adams, Henry, Laurens, 
Rutlcdge, Jefferson — and both together adjuring us to stand 
fast in the ranks where they stood, fight valiantly in the cause 
they fought for, and finish the historic purchase of freedom 
towards which they paid so heavy an installment ! 

Can the slaveholder extinguish the North Star, turn back 
the hand on the dial-plate of time, erase the teachings of his- 
tory, uncducate the human race, and pluck the moral law from 
the throne of God ? Besieged by tlie civilized world, four 
nrillions of slaves within his camp, God frowning on him, the 
very air teeming with phantoms and hurtling with invisible 
weapons to his disordered fancy, what can the Southron despot 
do, but either, with self-fired petard, hoist his all, or surrender ? 
Let disunion and conllict come, — and the abolition of slavery 



27 

will be the consequence, as surely as the sun sets. But so 
long as there is a better way, we do not court that method of 
the issue. Nor will it come, unless precipitated by the South, 
drunk with passion. The North desires simply freedom, 
justice, honor, not disunion. Do not all our Northern politi- 
cians boast to sail in the magnetic equator, or line of no dip . 
But the slaveholders attempt no concealment of their enor- 
mous Southern inclination. Our watchword is "The welfare 
of the country ;" theirs, " The interests of the South." It is 
the South alone that constantly threatens withdrawal, and 
plots treason. Her governors write it in their messages ; her 
legislators engross it in their records; her congressional dele- 
gation speak it in the halls of the capitol ; her barbecue 
orators, great and little, scream it amidst bowie knives and 
pistols; her newspapers keep it standing in their columns ; 
her mobs yell it as they burn the houses of freemen, ride 
abolitionists on rails, in coats of tar and feathers, throw print- 
ino'-prcsses into rivers, shoot schoolmasters before their pupils, 
drown or hang every man who utters a word for liberty, and 
shake the star-spangled banner over their coffles of slaves. 
Unless we stop our opposition to slavery, and yield whatever 
it demands, I verily believe disunion and civil war, will come 
from the unbridled madness of the South, if she be permitted to 
male them come,' There is no danger of them from any other 
quarter." It is our duty to prevent them from that quarter. 
How can we do it ? 

, This brings us to the third and last alternative. We can 
never cease opposing slavery until it ceases to exist. This the 
laws of Providence demonstrate. It is fate. The sacred 
crusade having once begun must go on to the end. The man 
who can scan the lessons of history, and then expect the agi- 
tatino- moral power of anti-slavery to withdraw from the field 
and extinguish itself, is no better than a fool. How, then, 
can we avert the rending catastrophe ? There is but one way 
clean of blood. The Free States, by the legal exercise of their 
o-uaranteed rights under the Constitution, must assume the 
national government, and prevent the disruption of the Union 



28 



in behalf of slavery, as President Jackson prevented South 
Carolinian nullification. In the last general election, eleven 
hundred thousand votes were cast in the Slave States, twenty- 
nine hundred thousand in the Free States. Ought we not, 
then, to have the control of the national government ? A 
slaveholder is unfit to fill any national representative oflBce. 
Mr. Calhoun was made Secretary of State. How quickly he 
disgraced the country, and made the cheek of every honorable 
man in it burn with shame, by flaring an atrocious eulogy of 
slavery in the eyes of the nations ! The civilization of the 
age, and our own compromised moral sensibility, command us 
to cry, No slavery propagandist in any governmental place ! 
Let the offices of the country, from tliat of the president 
down to that of the tide-waiter, be filled scrupulously with 
men pledged to the interests of freedom and righteousness, 
as they arc now filled Avith men generally devoted to the 
intcre?ts of slavery and partizauship, and there will be no 
further danger of disunion. The gigantic official patronage 
of the nation will no longer be prostituted to debauch the 
consciences, and buy the principles of our aspirants. The 
South, ever eager for offices, will grow considerate, allow the 
right of free discussion, begin to apprehend the true economi- 
cal bearings of the question, and seek how to bring herself 
up to the standard of the rest of the country. And, perhaps, 
by soon obeying the voice of her brave Helper, and introduc- 
ing the redemptive force of Northern institutions, she will 
quietly avert her " Impending Crisis." Our last duty, there- 
fore in the Free States, is, by the ballots of a majority of the 
population, to grasp the government, and administer it fairly 
in the interests of truth and humanity. In such hands alone 
will the country be redeemed, and the Union be safe. 

Tiie Southern party in the North brand themselves with 
infamy by the audacious cry they keep up about the disunionist 
and incendiary spirit of the free-soil voters. They profess to 
monopolize the civil virtues. All others hate their country 
and their fellow-men. Precisely the same inversion of the 
trutii was made in the sad early day of our Religion. Nero 



29 



in his cruel and crazy frolic of fiddling, set Rome on fire, and 
then accused the CHRISTIANS of it. And Tacitus says: 
"They were convicted less of this crime than of hatred of the 
human race ! " * Nero and his pagans loved the human race ! 
Christ and his followers hated the human race ! Henry A. 
Wise and Franklin Pierce love justice, mercy, and mankind! 
Ralph Waldo Emerson and John G. Whitticr love robbery and 
murder, and hate mankind ! At least, following Tacitus, so 
teaches the Boston Courier, and the infallibility of that meek 
journal is well known. I did not know that American patriot- 
ism consisted in brawling at corrupt caucuses, screeching 
fiendishly for the flag, whether right or wrong, living on the 
public treasury, and threatening to deluge our streets and 
villages with fraternal blood rather than have that darlina- 
supply of salaried pap cut off. I thought patriotism sacrificed 
selfish interest, that its country might stand pure and honora- 
ble among men. I dreamed that the true patriot loved his 
country so well that he would keep his life clean and his 
tongue truthful, for her sake. 

The slaveholders arc steering the ship of state towards a 
reef. The freedom party Avish to turn her into the safe chan- 
nel. The slaveholders swear if it be done they will scuttle 
her. Their northern allies help them to keep her on her fatal 
course, crying " The Republicans mean to sink the ship." 
They desire but to rescue the ship from her mad pilots, pre- 
serve her from the reef, and guide her to her true haven. And 
these calumniators know it perfectly well. 

The falsely named Conservative party of the North is mainly 
responsible for the spasms of terror and rage which have 
recently shot through the South, the fear and hate which, at 
the apparition of twenty armed men, for forty days and forty 
nights kept a great State pale and blustering, a half ludicrous, 
half pitiable spectacle. For that party have assured the 
South that this poor squad of heroic but misguided adventurers 
were supported by a large majority of the people of the North, 

* Hand perinde in crimine incendii, quam odio humani generis, convicti sunt. — 
Annal. lib xv: cap. xlv. 



30 



animated by an inexpressible desire for their destruction 
Dwelling, as the slaveholders do, in a magazine of explosive 
elements, no wonder they quake and are filled with rallying 
wrath when their pretended friends inform them that millions 
of the people of the Free States, with murderous malignity, are 
fomenting an insurrection among them, and are ready to march 
to its support with flags and cannon. Did he not know, when 
he said it, that he was eructing a naked lie huge enough to 
split any other throat, and virulent emough to blister any 
other lips ? 

Listen. " A part of the pulpit has set up among us a religion 
of hate, such as belongs only to the condemned devils in hell." 
" A band of drunken mutineers under the black flag of the 
pirate, with the death's head fore and aft, have seized the com- 
monwealth, and are about to blow her up, with all she con- 
tains." " All the political influences dominant here are 
founded on the single emotion of treacherous, ferocious, fiend- 
ish hate of our fellow-citizens in the Southern States." This 
is the soothing message which the Conservative wealth, learn- 
ing, respectability, and conscience of Massachusetts, in Faueuil 
Hall assembled, send out to the agitated half of the confederacy 
through the immaculate mouth of Caleb Cushing ! A more 
outrageous slander was never uttered. A more inflammatory 
falsehood was never blown Southward. Caleb, Caleb, was 
ever the Presidency in this humor wooed? Was ever the 
Presidency in this humor won? 

Tliat meeting in Fancuil Hall was to be condemned because 
it accused the great majority of Northern voters of a treason- 
able purpose and a demoniacal sentiment they do not harbor, 
and are known not to harbor. Our dear and loyal New Eng- 
land stands by the Fathers, the honor, and the duty of 
America; and whenever confronted with her slave-breeding 
sisters, conscious of her innocence and good aims, she may 
proudly say to them, as noble Banquo said to the hags on the 
heath of Fores, " I neither beg nor fear your favors nor your 
hate." That meeting iu Faueuil Hall commands not ]-espect, 
bccau^e, ^tripjied of veibiage and disguise, it really e.\{)ressed 



31 



but three things, neither of which is moral, or dignified, 
or deserved such pomp and circumstance of expression. First, 
it said, timidly, " Gentlemen of the South, we are frightened, 
ice icill compromise j^rhiciple for peace; put your feet on our 
necks ! " Secondly, a little louder, it said, " Gentlemen of 
the South, some of us are holders of office, others are candi- 
dates for office, a)id ive icant youj- votes; put your feet on our 
necks 1 " And, thirdly, with a voice like multitudinous waters, 
it said, " Gentlemen of the South, we want your trade and money; 
please put your feet on our necks a little more ! " Such 
selfish sycophancy is simply loathsome. 

Is not the foreign slave-trade carried on by the South at 
this moment, with impunity,^ in defiance of the Constitu- 
tion, in defiance of the civilized world, in defiance of decency, 
in defiance of God ? Docs a week pass in which some help- 
less traveller, pedler, or piano-forte tuner, is not subjected to 
the cowardly and brutal violence of a Southern mob because 
he expresses noble principles ? Has not the price of five 
thousand dollars been set on William Lloyd Garrison by the 
State of Georgia these twenty-eight years past ? Did not 
slaveholder Foote say to a New Hampshire Senator, in session 
of Congress, " Visit my constituents, and we will gibbet you 
on the nearest tree ?" Did not the unhappy person who repre- 
sented Soutli Carolina try to murder a Massachusetts Senator 
in his seat ? Did not slaveholder Davis say in the House of 
Representatives fourteen days ago, — " Virginia has hung the 
traitor Brown, and if they get hold of Seward they will hang 
hira? " — hang, simply because he opposes slavery, the illus- 
trious senator who ought to be the next President of the 
United States. "Was not the reward of ten thousand dollars 
recently offered by responsible persons for the delivery of 
Joshua R. Giddings, in the city of Richmond, that a mob might 
tear and trample him ? What have we ever done corres- 
ponding to these acts ? Caleb Gushing, if we are animated 
by 'Uhe single emotion of treacherous, ferocious, fiendish 
hate," what, in heaven's name, must they be animated by ? 

" No, Gentlemen of the South " — thus would a Faneuil Hall 



32 



meeting, expressing the genuine feeling of the Freedom Party, 
say — "we do not hate you. We feel kindly towards you. 
We wish you all blessings. The anti-slavery sentiment is nour- 
ished by solemn convictions of conscience, allegiance to the 
welfare of the country, regard to the claims of mankind, and 
obedience to the will of God; and does not rest and feed on 
hatred of you. Oh, lay not that flattering unction to your 
souls. When Virginia sent oyer the Union her appeal for the 
relief of pestilence-stricken Norfolk, while from all the other 
Slave States she received only twelve thousand dollars, did we 
not send her forty-two thousand ? You must discriminate the 
asserted malignity against yourselves, which we do not feel, 
from the undying hatred we cherish for slavery; an institution 
which sustains barbarism^ and mob law, is a sure source of 
strife and danger, destroys the sanctity of the mail, adopts 
the Austrian passport system, and tends equally to degrade its 
victims into animals, and to inflame its lords into fiends. Op- 
posed to the iniquities of your system, we wish you well. Wc 
beseech you to refrain from those mobocratic acts, every one 
of which drives up to the heart, through the warm runnels of 
our blood, more fervor of anti-slavery conviction than a dozen 
ethical demonstrations would generate. Violence is a losing 
game for you, gentlemen ! Sowing the wind of border-ruCQan- 
ism in Kansas, did you not reap the whirlwind of John Brown 
at Harper's Ferry ? — John Brown, the fifth lineal descendant of 
Peter Brown, who landed from the Mayflower on Plymouth 
Rock two hundred and thirty-nine years ago to-day ! You 
strangled him, but could not strangle the power of the lessons 
he taught, nor the ideal shape of splendor which rose from his 
gallows to hover over the historied continent forever. As 
friends, wc tell you you had better desist from your guilty 
advocacy. We implore you to put aside the braggadocio atti- 
tude and the fillibustcr array by which you ofl'end our moral 
sensibilities and disgrace us before mankind. We ask you to 
cause yourselves to be represented in the national councils by 
your cultivated Christian gentlemen, who will bring grammar 
in their brains and purity in their hearts; not by your vicious 



33 



braggarts and fanatics, with butcher knives in their bosoms 
and revolvers in their pockets/ We invite you to grant us our 
rights as the majority, and fraternally to cooperate with us in 
prudent measures prospective to emancipation. Do this, and 
all will be well. But if you obstinately refuse, remember wc 
are stronger than you, are in the right, and shall no longer 
submit to be driven by you." That is the true voice of the 
Free States. 

We hate not the Slaveholders. We hate not the Union. 
But we do hate the sin which thrives in their shadow. And 
we say to them. " For God's sake cease to nourish it ! " A 
French naturalist once saw, in the fastnesses of a mountain land, 
an enormous black serpent coiled at the foot of a cliff on whose 
summit was an eagle's nest, into which two of the serpent's 
young had crawled and destroyed the eggs. The eagle, sud- 
denly returning, tore the intruders from his nest, flung them 
mangled away, and darted on the parent snake. The reptile 
twisted and struck at its assailant with its fangs. When the 
contest had continued for some time, the bruised and wearied 
snake sought to retreat into its hole; but the determined bird, 
planting himself before the entrance, guarded his body with 
one wing, while with the other he struck his enemy prostrate, 
and with one blow of his beak laid its head open — and the 
conflict was over. We say to slavery, Beware lest by straying 
beyond your home and attempting to thrust your offspring 
into the nest of the Public Territory, to suck the unhatched 
eggs of freedom there, you provoke the assault of the aroused 
Genius of the Republic. 

We are also bound to rescue the general government from 
the Slave-Power, by the claims of consistency,^ as well as to 
prevent the otherwise threatened disunion and war. The ina- 
lienable right of every man to the pursuit and enjoyment of 
the blessings of existence, is the basis on which our country 
properly stands. We flaunt this principle on our great charter, 
and have proclaimed it to the whole earth. And now to stand 
up in the face of mankind and declare tliat we mean freedom 
and equality for ourselves, but abject bondage for those in our 



34 



power, is conduct so flagrant, it is no wonder our moral influ- 
ence is neutralized, and our name a hissing. America is now 
represented before the world by that illicit Captain, who, when 
seized on the deck from which he had ordered two hundred 
manacled slaves to be hurled overboard in his flight, and be- 
neath which were crowded five hundred more, had in his bosom 
a bowie-knife, bearing on one side the inscription, " The land 

OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE;" On the Othcr 

side, " Do uxio others as you would have them do unto 
YOU ! " If it be not our duty to reverse all this, why then 
there is no duty. Let us pledge ourselves to discharge the 
obligation. We can do it. We have nothing to give us dis- 
trust, either in Southern propagandists or Northern apologists. 
The allegiant East afliliatiug itself with the broad Middle 
States, and the generous North West, must put a stop to the 
fearful demoralization and political degeneracy of the country, 
and restore the nobler strain of the Fathers. Rescuing the 
administrative power of the land from its long perversion, and 
guiding its policy and patronage to issues of righteousness and 
liberty, the Freedom Party, if they will, can save the country 
and fulfil the hopes of mankind, showing that not even the most 
formidable league of falsehood and power can always avail to 
hide the omnipotence of justice, or 

To fetter the Truth as she moves through the -world 
With her hand to the sword aud her banner unfurled. 

Friends, Citizens of the Free States ! if we do our duty 
without flinching, civil strife, bloodslicd and ruin will be forever 
averted. The national conscience will be thoroughly awaken- 
ed, the })ul)lic mind illuminated, the common heart touched. 
The brightening fires of truth and lo?e will burn so intensely 
and so widely, that all fetters will melt, the collected corrup- 
tions of ages be consumed, tlie country agree with one consent 
to put an end to this evil thing, and the splendid vision of a He- 
public realizing the logical consequences of the Declaration 
of Independence, will emerge on the gaze of the world. 
Swii'Uy the time will sj)eed forward Avhen the enjoyment of 
the prerogatives of humanity bhall be the universal birthright, 



35 



not the purchased privilege, of man. Then, as from the far-off 
and blackened peaks of the Past, the gathered generations, 
amid the meteor lights and crimson standards of war, with 
deadly weapons in their hands, shout across the intervening 
chasm, " mrh a great sum obtained ive this freedom;' — horn the 
green summits of the Present, the congregated multitudes, 
under the white flags of peace, and in the sweet smile of 
heaven, with implements of industry and symbols of plenty in 
their hands, shall cry, in glad and grateful response, ^^ But xoe 
ivere free-horn.'^ 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX OF ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 



Note 1. 

From the Boston Transcript of Dec. 5, 1859. 

Washixgtox, Nov. 30th. 
AUSTRIAN DESPOTISM INAUGURATED IN WASHINGTON. 

To THE Editor of the Transcript : — 

This city contains some 70,000 inhabitants, two-thirds of ■whom are from 
the free States, and not ten of whom own a slave ; and yet from the character 
and conduct of the magistracy here, it would seem we are in the same condi- 
tion of subserviency to the demands of slavery that exists in Richmond, Nor- 
folk and elsewhere. Doctor Breed, of this city, a man not only friendly in 
his manners, but by profession a Friend, met last week in the room of another 
friend, Edward Stabler, Doctor Van Camp, to whom he was introduced for 
the first time. The conversation, after discussing spiritualism, jjsychology and 
other matters, fell upon John Brown and the Harper's Ferry foray. Doctor 
Van Camp having made quotations from a speech of Mr. Seward, declared 
" he would shoot any man who dared use such language in his presence." 
This was at once responded to by Dr. Breed saying that " he dared do it," 
and repeated the objectionable language. An angry dispute followed, but 
when ended, on taking leave. Dr. Breed shook hands with Dr. Van Camp ; 
and he supposed that was the end of the affair. But not so. In the " States" 
paper there appeared an article, headed, " Have we a John Brown among 
us ? " in which Dr. Breed was named as " Ostensibly engaged as a Solicitor of 
Patents," and suggesting that " the police will probably be serving him as they 
have served others." Upon this palpable hint the magistracy moved, and Mr. 
Justice Donn issued a special warrant for his apprehension. Dr. Breed ap- 
peared, and demanded to know under what law he had been arrested. 

The Justice replied, " There were no statutes in force in respect to sedition, 
but he believed a wide sweeping law of Maryland in view of probable 
breeches of peace would cover the case ; that he looked on Dr. Breed as a 
dangerous man to a Southern community, and he was arraigned on the charge 
of seditious language inciting to rebellion." The result of this procedure was 
to bind Dr. Breed over in the sum of 82000 for one year to keep the peace. 

Now this matter is of some moment to the citizens of the free States gener- 



40 



ally who visit this city, unconscious that they are in a Southern community, 
and that language like that used by Dr. Breed will lay them open to arrest 
and imprisonment. Nothing is more common than to hear Southern men at 
the hotels talk ever so loudly of their deadly hostility of all Black Republi- 
cans ; but whether the magistracy are perfectly satisfied of the peaceable and 
timid character of such men, or otherwise, no such man has ever been ar- 
rested. 

But is Washington a Southern community ? The population, wealth, tal- 
ent and industry of the city is concentrated on the free men of the Korth — 
New England is largely represented here, and they owe it to their parentage 
that they should make themselves heard and respected here. As it is, they 
seem to me as cornered before the miserable handful of Southern office hold- 
ers waiting temporarily here ; men who enrich the city only to the extent of 
the salaries they receive and expend. And as for the daily press, it is abso- 
lutely muzzled. 

This topic is one that cannot but interest Northern and "Western men who 
visit this city, and who may be arrested in the cars by the armed men of Vir- 
ginia ere they reach us. Witness the arrest of three merchants on their way 
to Baltimore, by spies of Gov. Wise at Harper's Ferry. 

Massachusetts. 

Note 2. 
Singleton of Mississippi said, in Congress, Dec. 19, 1850 : — 
" If you exclude slavery from us, it will prove the disruption of every tie. 
We will have expansion of slavery in the Union or ouiside of it, if we must. 
The South have made up their minds to sustain slavery. We don't intend to 
be prescribed by present limits, and it will not be in the power of the North 
to coerce the 3,000,000 of freemen at the South with arms in their hands, and 
prevent their going into the surrounding territories. 

" The South could expand to Mexico, that country being without govern- 
ment, and they could administer the estate for themselves. Wlienever a man 
like Mr. Seward or Mr. Hale was elected to preside over the destinies of the 
South, there may be expected an undivided front in that direction, and all 
parties will be united in resistance to aggression. The only way to preserve 
the Union is to reopen the Territories to the South, on equal terms with the 
North. If the people make slave States, permit them to come into the Union 
as slave States. Execute the Fugitive Slave Law, and give the South the as- 
surance that when their slaves run away, t'uere will be no difficulty in the 
recovery of them." 

Note 3. 

The South Carolina Legislature has just passed Resolutions recommending 
a union of the Slave States for secession, and appropriating ten (?) thousand 
dollars to arm itself. Is not that rather a small sum, Palmetto ? 

Mr. Singleton loo has just avowed: 

" If the Republicans elect Mr. Slicrnum, t!:ey will do it at the peril of sev- 



41 



ering the ties -whicli bind us together, and the very moment they elect such a 
Speaker, I will not undertake to be responsible for the consequences. It will 
be considered by the South as adding insult to injury. 



Note 4. 
WHO AKE THE DISUNIONISTS. 

Congress has now been in session two weeks, and men of all parties have 
avowed their sentiments in regard to the Union. Who has threatened or jus- 
tified disunion ? 

C. C. Clay, an Administration Democrat. 

Alfred Iverson, an Administration Democrat. 

A. G. Brown, an Administration Democrat. 

Jeff. Davis, an Administration Democrat. 

AV. M. Gwin, an Administration Democrat. 

L. M. Keitt, an Administration Democrat. 

M. J. Crawford, an Administration Democrat. 

J. M. L. Curry, an Administration Democrat. 

L. Q. C. Lamar, an Administration Democrat. 

Reuben Davis, an Administration Democrat. 

John J. McRae, an Administration Democrat. 

C. L. Vallandigham, an Administration Democrat. 

Roger G. Pryor, an Administration Democrat. 

Syd. Moore, an Administration Democrat. 

M. R. II. Garnett, an Administration Democrat. 

William Smith, an Administration Democrat. 

W. P. Miles, an Administration Democrat. 

But not a single Republican ! 

These Disunionists have been rebuked by the Republican members. But 
their Democratic colleagues have not uttered a word in condemnation of their 
traitorous sentiments. On the contrary, they applaud and encourage them. 

It is a note-worthy fact that the Union-Saving Meetings of the Northern 
cities, although they lavish censure on men who have been loyal to the Union 
all their lives, do not utter a single word of rebuke to these disunionists ! — 
Albany Eve. Journal. 

Note 5. 

[From the Weekly News of April 14th, 1S59, published at Enterprise, Miss.) 

TO SHIP OWNERS AND MASTERS OF OUR MERCANTILE 

MARINE. 

We, the undersigned, will pay three hundred dollars (300,) per head for 
one thousand (1000,) native Africans, between the ages of fourteen (14) and 



42 



twenty (20) years, (of sexes equal.) (likely, sound and healthy,) to be deliv- 
ered within twelve (12) months from this date at some point which is accessi- 
ble by land, between the ports of Pensacola, Florida, and Galveston, Texas. 
The contractors giving thirty (30) days' notice as to the time and place of 
delivery ; or we will pay fifty ($50) dollars extra if delivered to us at Enter- 
prise, Clark county, jNIiss. 

Wm. S. Price, Sen., A. Y. Wolverton, 

Wm. Tom. Smith, Joseph Borden, 

George W. Doby, James M. Hand, 

A. Ferryman, George AV. Freeman, 

Keese Price, Sen., J. L. George, 

Abram Carr, Samuel R. Oliphant, 

Thomas Wolverton, Wm. Marshall, 

Samuel W. Howze, James W. Winn, 

Wm. S. Price, Jr. James M. Parks. 

April 10, 1859. 

That we will meet the above, reference is made to the following houses in 
Mobile, Ala.: Boykin & McEae ; Tate, Stewart & Co., G. Goode, Patrick 
Irwin & Co., G. P. Kelly. 

We who have signed this advertisement, profess to be law-abiding citizens, 
but cannot respect any act purporting to be law, which we believe to be un- 
constitutional, as such we esteem that which interdicts the slave trade either 
domestic or foreign. 

They arc regarded as merchandise and slaves here, and in their native 
country by their brethren ; the latter condition is forbidden by Divine Law, 
but the same law says to the Hebrews, You shall enslave the heathen around 
you, and they shall be a perpetual inheritance for your children. We have 
never known Africans semi-civilized but by our plan of the American institu- 
tion of domestic slavery. 

We feel that great mutual benefits have, and are flowing from the institu- 
tion, and esteem it a duty to extend the privileges of becoming semi-civilized 
to the other of Africa's degraded race, by mingling, at least, a like number 
with the four millions now among us, that reciprocal benefits may result. 



Note 6. 

The following horrible but voluntary statement was made by a correspond- 
ent of the Frederick ([Maryland) Ihraltl, in regard to the IIarj)ei''s Ferry 
tragedy : — 

'• The dead lay in the streets, and in the river, and were subjected to every 
indi:.'iiity that a wild and madly e.Kcited people could heap upon them. 

" Curses were freely uttered against them, and kicks and blows inflicted upon 
them. The huge mulatto that shot Mr. Turner, was lying in the gutter in 
front of the arsenal, with a terrible wound in his neck, and though dead and 



43 



gory, vengeance was unsatisfied, and many, as they ran sticks into his wounds 
or beat him with them, wished that he had a thousand lives that all of them 
might be forfeited in expiation and avengement of the foul deed he had com- 
mitted. 

" Leeman lay upon the rock upon the river, and was made a target for the 
{practice of those who had captured Sharp's rifles in the fray. Shot after shot 
was fired at him, and when tired of this sj)ort, a man waded out to where he 
lay, and set hirn itp, in grotesque attitudes, and finally pushed him off, and he 
floated down the stream. His body and that of Thompson, which was also in 
the water, were subsequently brought to shore, and were buried, as were all of 
them, except a few which were taken by some physicians. It may be thought 
that there was cruelty and barbarity in this ; but the state of the public mind 
had been frenzied by the outrages of these men ; and being outlaws, were 
regarded as food for carrion birds, and not as human creatures." 



Note 7. 

From the Boston Courier, Dec. 19, 1859. 

The United States House of Representatives is still unorganized. The 
chief business of each session is Southern abuse of the Republican Representa- 
tives, who sit in silence. Nearly all the members are armed, and it is esti- 
mated that during the past week the loaded revolvers in the pockets of" hon- 
orable members " were equal to one thousand shots. This is a sad state of 
things. 

NOTE 8. 

The following extract from Victor Hugo's letter on John Brown, shows 
how the free States are compromised by slavery, and how America appears 
to the noblest men in Europe : — 

" Such things are not done with impunity in the face of the civilized world. 
The universal conscience of mankind is an ever-watchful eye. Let the 
judges of Charlestown, and Hunter, and Parker, and the slave-holding jurors, 
and the whole population of Virginia, ponder it well ; they are seen. They 
are not alone in the world. At this moment the gaze of Europe is fixed on 
America. 

" The executioner of Brown, let us avow it openly, (for the day of the kings 
is past, and the day of the people dawns, and to the people we are bound 
frankly to speak the truth) — the executioner of Brown would be neither the 
attorney Hunter, nor the judge Parker, nor the Governor AVise, nor the State 
of Virginia ; it would be, we say it, and we think it with a shudder, the whole 
American republic. 

" The more one loves, the more one admires, the more one reveres the 
republic, the more heart-sick one feels at such a catastrophe. A single State 



44 



ought not to have the power to dishonor all the rest, and in this case Federal 
intervention is a clear right. Otherwise, by hesitating to interfere when it 
might prevent a crime, the Union becomes an accomplice. Xo matter how 
intense may be the indignation of the generous jSTorthern States, the South- 
ern States associate them with the disgrace of this murder. All of us, who- 
soever we may be — for whom the democratic cause is a common country — 
feel ourselves in a manner compromised and hurt. 

" When we reflect on what Brown, the liberator, the champion of Clirist, 
has striven to effect, and when we remember that he is about to die, slaugh- 
tered by' the American republic, the crime assumes the proportions of the 
nation which commits it; and when we say to ourselves that this nation is a 
glory of the human race ; that — like France, like England, like Germany — 
she is one of the organs of civilization ; that she sometimes even outmarches 
Europe by the sublime audacity of her progress ; that she is the queen of an 
entire world; and that she bears on her brow an immense light of freedom; 
we affirm that John Brown will not die, for we recoil, horror-struck, from the 
idea of so great a crime committed by so great a people. 

" As for myself, though I am but an atom, yet being, as I am, in common 
with all other men, inspired with the conscience of humanit^y, I kneel in tears 
before the great starry banner of the new world, and with clasped hands, and 
with profound and filial respect, I implore the illustrious American Republic, 
sister of the French Republic, to look to the safety of the universal moral 
law, to save Brown, to throw down the threatening scaffold of the IGth De- 
cember, and not to suffer that, beneath its eyes, and I add, with a shudder, 
almost by its fault, the first fratricide be outdone. 

"For — yes, let America know it and ponder it well — there is something 
more terrible than Cain slaying Abel — it is Washington slaying Spartacus." 

'^Hauteville House, Dec. 2, 1859." 



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LIBRARY CF CONGRESS 



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